I don't think AMD will totally halt RX 6800 sales, but it has always been a GPU that only exists to take care of yields. If a Navi 21 isn't at least 90% functional on the CUs, and fully functional on the cache and memory controllers, it can't be sold as a 6800 XT. I do wonder if some Navi 21 chips end up as RX 6700 / RX 6750 XT, just because there will inevitably be flaws in the Infinity Cache or memory controllers. But perhaps AMD just doesn't bother with such chips.

The higher power limit also comes into play, and while Sapphire didn't specify an official TBP (Typical Board Power) and only gave TGP (Total Graphics Power, which only measures the power consumed by the main GPU chip), all told we'd expect performance to be about 10% than the 6900 XT. As we'll see in a moment, that's often the case but there are occasions where the 6950 XT delivers much higher performance. AMD's Radeon RX 6950 XT, you see, is a proper enthusiast-spec card. You get a 256-bit memory bus and 16GB of VRAM and that means plenty of bandwidth and indeed sufficient VRAM for the latest games. The RX 6950 XT has good ray tracing benchmarks which help to boost gaming performance. However, some reportssay its capabilities are inferior compared to other cards like the RTX 4070. Are AMD GPUs good 2023? Starting with Rainbow Six Extraction, we find the 6950 XT to be chart topping at 1080p with 309 fps, a 10% increase over the 6900 XT. That allowed it to budge ahead of the much more expensive RTX 3090 Ti at this lower resolution and it's an 11% boost over the RTX 3080 Ti, a GeForce GPU that's still more expensive than the 6950 XT.At the pinnacle of AMD’s previous generation GPUs, the RX 6950 XT was heralded as the pinnacle performer, specifically tailored to thrive in the most demanding of environments. Its raw power and computational capabilities are hard to rival. However, innovation never rests. The upcoming RX 7800 XT, though a part of a newer generation, is not just bringing raw power to the table. According to AMD’s insights, it’s equipped with a game-changing feature: the AI accelerators. As such, it is a great option for gamers out there who can afford a premium card, but aren't actually giant, human-shaped, walking piles of money – it least it would be, if RDNA 3 wasn't right around the corner. AMD's next-gen graphics cards are likely to make some major advances in terms of ray tracing and hardware-assisted upscaling tech that should blow the current generation of AMD cards out of the water, so buying anything premium from this generation right now is iffy at best. It’s important to note that other options like the Ryzen 9 5900X, or the Ryzen 5 5600X are also good choices for pairing with the RX 6950 XT, but the Intel Core i9-12900K stands out due to its high performance and power efficiency. Furthermore, it’s important to consider the compatibility with the motherboard, power consumption, and the price-performance ratio when choosing the right CPU for your gaming rig. In nearly all of our benchmarks, the RX 6950 XT falls short of the RTX 3090 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and even the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, depending on the test. But where the RX 6950 XT falters, it's not completely bowled over, and its greatest weakness is when ray tracing is being pushed to the max. The 6950 XT is the flagship solution of the AMD previous generation; even though it might seem a bit low. Considering today’s 7000-series, this is a fast and strong GPU capable of delivering great results for content creators, professional power users, and even gamers. Although, we’d normally not recommend using an x950 with only gaming purposes in mind. The AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT has a peak single precision compute performance of 23.65 TFLOPS, which is quite powerful and allows for smooth and efficient processing of large amounts of data.

JarredWaltonGPU said:In the US, the RX 6800 has been in relatively short supply and the price has been significantly marked up for basically ever. At present, retail prices are roughly as follows: If you're looking at straight raster performance the AMD card has a fairly significant edge, especially for two cards that now cost the same amount of cash with the red team dropping its pants on pricing for its once flagship GPU. And a few years ago that would have absolutely been enough for me to say 'stuff the RTX 4070, imma get me some AMD goodness.' The Radeon RX 6950 XT in this review is based on the same RDNA2 graphics architecture as the other Radeon RX 6000 cards and built on the same 7 nm process as the RX 6900 XT. What's more, the two even share an identical core configuration as they max out the "Navi 21" silicon—5,120 stream processors across 80 RDNA2 compute units, 80 Ray Accelerators, 320 TMUs, and 128 ROPs. To create the RX 6950 XT, AMD innovated in three distinct directions. Next we have Watch Dogs: Legion and again the 6950 XT tops the chart at 1080p, averaging 168 fps or 6% faster than the 6900 XT, and a mere 6% faster than what should be the much cheaper 6800 XT, though in reality it isn't.As usual, it's 4K that proves to be a challenge for RNDA2 in its battle with Ampere and now it's the RTX 3090 Ti that leads the 6950 XT by an 8% margin. We're looking at a 12% performance boost for the 6950 XT over the 6900 XT, and that was enough to put it just ahead of the RTX 3090 and 3080 Ti. However, the RX 6950 XT flaunts its flagship stature with larger numbers in certain areas. Its 5120 cores, surpassing the 3840 of the RX 7800 XT, suggest a greater raw computational power. Moreover, with 80 RT Accelerators, the RX 6950 XT overshadows the RX 7800 XT’s 60, further asserting its dominance.

That said, we are only talking about a 3% boost over the RTX 3090 Ti. The Radeon is around 45% cheaper right now though, so that's a win for AMD. When compared to the 6900 XT though we're only looking at a 6% boost, so certainly not worth the premium. It’s also evident in the L3 cache, with the RX 6950 XT boasting double the volume at 128 MB compared to the RX 7800 XT’s 64 MB. While the 7800 XT represents AMD’s strides in newer tech, especially with its more refined TSMC 5nm process technology, the 6950 XT’s raw specs still seem to edge out, especially in terms of core count. The sheer magnitude of specs in the 6950 XT serves as a testament to its commanding presence during its era. Jeremy's argument that the difference between 16GB and 12GB of VRAM is going to make the real difference going forward is fine, but I'm yet to be convinced that is going to be a real battle outside of some very specific instances. Overall, roughly three times as many games support DLSS 2 as FSR 2 — and note that all of the DXR games and six of the nine rasterization games in our test suite support DLSS, while FSR2 is only supported in two of the DXR games and three of the rasterization games. In each of those games Nvidia's RTX 4070 will get about a 30–50 percent boost to performance, using Quality mode upscaling. That means a game will typically run significantly faster than AMD's RX 6950 XT if a game only supports DLSS and not FSR2 All of which isn't to say that I don't value the RTX 4070's feature set. In my view, DLSS scaling is definitely that little bit sharper and more effective than AMD's FSR. And frame generation in DLSS 3 is a nice feature, even if it's absolutely not the same thing as adding more frames and will do nothing to help the RTX 4070 in those instances when it runs out of VRAM.AMD and Nvidia release regular driver updates for their GPUs. The number of driver releases from both companies has been quite high over the past year, easily numbering in the dozens. In the past, some have complained about poor drivers from AMD or Nvidia, but having tested GPUs from both companies, it's hard to see much difference. Just about every major game release in the past year has seen Game Ready drivers from both companies — and even Intel is getting in on the action now. Getting a good fit for a strong GPU such as the 6950 XT is a difficult task. However, we have given some great options so far. All of them have good pricing but if you’re still looking for a better price, then this is your shot. The Ryzen 5 5600X is a mid-range CPU from Team Red, however, don’t let that fool you. The CPU is strong enough to be a great match for the 6950 XT. You’ll be able to perform the vast majority of activities, with this rig investing as little money as possible. Finally at 4K the 6950 XT falls further behind the RTX 3080 Ti and trails the RTX 3090 Ti by a 16% margin, and that's despite boosting performance over the original 6900 XT by 13%. Power Consumption

You can see my full results in the table above. There isn’t much to highlight outside of ray tracing performance. In Cyberpunk 2077,the RX 6950 XT massively underperforms compared to Nvidia’s cards, just like the RX 6900 XT. AMD’s current-gen cards aren’t great when it comes to ray tracing — read our RX 6500 XT review for another example — and the RX 6950 XT doesn’t change that. Content creation Jacob Roach / Digital Trends Starting with the 1080p fps average gaming data we see that for low resolution gamers targeting maximum fps – we imagine mostly competitive shooter type gamers – the Radeon RX 6950 XT is about as good as it gets for out of the box performance.It's not enabled in every game, and needs to be coded in by the devs, but it's being baked into game engines now and will certainly become more widely used. I don't want to find myself with an RX 6950 XT, proud of its old school raster performance, when I really want to be running some shiny new lighting effects at 4K in a new game.